Nexus/GURPS Stuff

Nexus For GURPS, Or Something Close To That At Any Rate

New! A nice pile of characters!

This page is a collection of notes, short essays, and so on, describing my version of Daedelus Games "Nexus" setting. It is very rare in the extreme that I purchase or use readymade settings, and in fact there's only two I was interested enough in to work on -- Nexus and the Gatecrasher setting from Hot Tub Dragon/Grey Ghost. Both have mutated heavily in my own versions, and then were unceremoniously stripped of their mechanics (without lubricant) and smashed into either Hero or GURPS, depending on my inclinations at the moment. Due to the sudden burst of cluelessness on the part of the folks at Hero Games (here's a hint, guys -- don't promise to post rules, fail to do so, and forget to update your web page for three months after the due date if you want your fans to think you are actually working on your projects -- it takes five minutes to change a web page) I've decided to focus on GURPS. It's clunkier than Hero in many ways, but it's being actively supported, not killed off to be replaced by an 'entry level' system. (If you get the hint I'm a little irked at the direction Hero games is going, please report to the nearest Psi-Corps office. They're everywhere -- for your convenience)

Be that as it may, the following textual tidbits are virtually mechanic-free. When I get around to posting characters, vehicles, etc, my choice of gaming systems will make a difference.

As a note, Lizards definitions, comments, etc, override whatever the original Nexus rules state, where they disagree. And if you're wondering why I don't have links to a Nexus page, it's because I can't find any anywhere! Waaah! Nexus is the sort of game/setting that really should have caught on, but didn't. Too complex for the T$R Munchkins? Not angsty enough for the Clove Smoking Fanboys In Black? Too many rules for the 'free-form' crowd and not enough for the GURPS/Hero/Rolemaster weenies? I dunno. But I like it, and I am using it, so there, nyeah.

In any event, here are (in no particular order) my notes on Nexus in the Lizardverse. Some are ridiculously broad, others obsessively trivial. None are likely of any interest to anybody, but, thanks to the wonders of the World Wide Web, I can take random notes floating around my desk and publish them for the world to view! Yeehah! Bite me, Kirkpatrick Sale!

Those of you with any knowledge of gaming and/or fantasy&sf will recognize a great number of my 'original' creations as being someone else's creations with the serial numbers filed down, or sometimes not even that. I make no pretense of originality -- if I see anything I like in any media, I change a few names (or not) and connect it to my version of Nexus. Since Nexus links countless zillions of realities, I have the perfect excuse to steal with even less shame than I usually do. (For example, any resemblance between Gothos and a certain setting by a certain company known for it's overly angsty fans is purely noncoincidental -- but give me a year of detailing it, and it will be quite different indeed...)

Assassin Games:When you have an infinite number of realities at your disposal, numerous businesses become possible. AGI is one such business...

Want to kill someone? Hitler? Thomas Jefferson? Your ex-wife? Now you can! Assassin Games, Incorporated, will find you a reality where whoever you want to kill is still alive. We'll train you in the language, the customs, and the geography. And we'll give you a really neat gun. The rest, as they say, is up to you!

Like their ad says, AGI finds victims for would-be killers. The company has faced censure from all sides, due to their utter unconcern for who the victim is, or the fate of the world they have found after the 'hit' has been made.

In a recent interview in "Sentients", Thomas Agrin, CEO and founder of AGI, was asked, "What's next? Giving people nukes to drop on cities they don't like?", to which he replied, "You know, that's not a bad idea...".

In a seeming attempt to shock Mr. Agrin, a number of outraged Nexans, posing as customers, named *him* as their victim -- and to *their* shock, Mr. Agrin happily took their money and turned them loose on several alternates of himself. Only one such customer went through with the assassination, noting, "In every reality, the man is a slime. I'm able to sleep better, knowing at least one world is free of him." Back To List

Realities

:There are countless thousands of realities overlapping into Nexus. Some are well integrated into the city, such as True York or Riverwall. Others are more independant, having only a few access points, but with considerable two-way traffic regardless. Finally, there are those realities which are almost entirely unaware of their links to Nexus, realities only enterable through a few key points. These can be among the most dangerous and the most profitable, because once away from the interface, you are locked out of Nexus and other realities -- this cuts down on the competition, but also deprives you of an escape route.

Hubs and Micronexan Phenomenon

A 'Hub', for my purposes, is any reality which is generally in-phase with Nexus and which defines itself primarly by its relationship with Nexus. A 'Micronexan Phenomenon' is something like the Infinite Building or the Canal -- a linkage of commonly-themed realities overlapping into the metasystem that is Nexus.

Cemetary:People die in Nexus, often with alarming frequency. Where do they go?

Well, it depends.

Some are simply picked up off the street and find their way to organleggers or Soylent plants. Others, especially non-carbon-based lifeforms, dissolve into piles of goo. Many simply vanish when the reality they died in shifted out of phase. A good number of longtime Nexans have wills which stipulate what reality they are to be buried in. But a very large number, especially those born in Nexus, go the Cemetary.

Like Route I-666, The Endless Building, and the Museum of Unnatural Ahistory, the Cemetary is a metareality, a mininexus. From Boot Hill to Shanghalla, the resting places of a thousand realities overlap here. There is always room for one more body, and the mourners never disturb one another. The tombs range from unmarked headstones to mausoleums to pyramids, and the weather is perpetually cold and mist-shrouded. The grounds are well tended, though no one is quite sure who the groundskeepers are.

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The Dungeon:This is a parallel to Nexus, the Canal, the Infinite Building, and Port Chaos. The Dungeon is a vast, some would say infinite, underground complex of rooms, passages, traps, etc. It ties together the labyrinths of a thousand realities. While each might make sense in the context of their own reality, the fragments that overlap into Nexus create a bizaare environment that seems to consist entirely of isolated creatures guarding random treasures, waiting for someone to come and kill them. Very odd, indeed. The main interfaces seem to be near Riverwall, but they can actually be found anywhere.

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Nu Ork City:About a dozen years ago (as near as such things can be measured), a space hulk holding a few hundred Orks passed into a rift and crashed, rather messily, into a formerly empty area of Nexus which had been used as a cross-reality junkpile. The Orks loved it, took it over, and made it their own. They first decided to conquer the entirety of the city from the 'weedie oomans', but quickly found out they were outnumbered,outspelled,and outgunned. This didn't stop most of them, but about 20% showed a smattering of brains (the other 80% just showed a *splattering* of brains), realized this wasn't their own universe, and settled down to being mercenaries, enforcers, and otherwise gainfully employed. They've also bred like mad since then, filling up the old hulk and adding on to it in a ridiculous clash of architectural styles, as the MekBoyz get 'inspired' by the various things they see in the rest of Nexus. Nu Ork City is high-tech, high-psi, low-magic. (These are Space Orks from the overly-laden-wif-spiky-bitz-but-still-nifty Warhammer 40K setting from Games Workshop)

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Arena Sauria:Thanks to some deals which will never be fully known, a rather enterprising half elf (I'm NOT an elf!) named Valleria managed to secure a large chunk of real estate, teleport (we're not sure how, and we're sure we don't want to know) an entire gladiatorial arena onto it (sans gladiators), and contract with a number of hunting services to go trolling down the highways and byways of Route I-666 to find dinosaurs and 'bring em back alive'. Then the show began. Valleria (who is not an elf, she wants you to know) has managed to rake in quite a lot of metabucks with her twice-weekly shows. Lately, she's enhanced the profit margins by renting out the arena to rock bands, evangelists (the recent Nexus-wide "Young Sentients Crusade For Cthulhu" held its' (very) final rally here), and other such types who need a large audience. The refreshment stands cater to all tastes and biologies, and a quite nice restauraunt has just been opened, serving what you'd expect. ("Hey, after the winner has had his fill, there's still plenty left on the bones! What do you want me to do, waste it?")

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Titanic Floating Casino:In at least one reality, the Titanic didn't hit that iceberg;it hit a rift into Nexus instead. When the crew and passengers realized where they were, and were told what had happened to them in a dozen other realities, they realized they'd gotten a pretty good deal, all told, and settled in. The majority of the passengers were bound for a new life in a land of opportunity anyway, and decided Nexus was as good as America for that purpose. The wealthy found a world that challenged even their greed and ruthlessness. And the captain, seizing ownership by default, decided that he was going to get his share of the pie. The ship had legendary fame in many realities;he decided to exploit that to create the greatest casino Nexus (or any other reality) had ever known. He succeeded, and now, three generations later, people still trek through dangerous realities for a chance to lose their money on the Titanic. Just don't ask for 'extra ice' in your drink;the staff has heard that one. Once a year, for two weeks, the ship powers up its engines (kept in tip-top condition) and cruises through realities where it was known to have sunk;the annual "Freak The Mundanes" tour is an experience not to be missed.

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True York:In 1999, at precisely midnight, 12/31, the island of Manhattan and a good chunk of the surrounding real estate ripped loose from our reality and materialized just 'offshore' in Nexus. The general role it fills is that of Angel City from the rulebooks. The city has adapted as well as can be expected to the new environment, with many parts of it linking up to the rest of the patchwork that is Nexus. (For example, the subway system now links into a number of other underground labyrinths, including The Dungeon. To date, no 'native' of True York has noticed the difference.)

The city was named "True York" to distinguish it from all of the various alternate New Yorks phasing in and out.

True York has spawned a number of Micronexan Phenomenon, specifically the Museum Of Unnatural Ahistory and Decentral Park. The New York Public Library is now firmly part of L-Space.

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Riverwall:A high-magic, low-tech zone which has managed to retain a lot of its original medevial atmosphere despite having spent the last twenty-five years in Nexus. It is located on the north side of the Canal, and has one of the most powerful adaptive fields known:Just about everything tech is translated upon entry, or simply ceases to function. The field radiates upwards as well, so gravcars give the area a wide berth. Riverwall is home to a very ancient academy of magic, one which has grown even more powerful as mages from a hundred realities come to study. The original city of Riverwall was roughly five miles across and surrounded by an additional five miles of farmland. Since then, much of this land has become settled, since the walls of the original city were pointless in this new realm, and food could be more easily had by trade than by growing it from the soil. Contact with countless new cultures has caused the style of architecture in the 'New Quarter' to be very odd indeed.

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Tokyo 2121:So-named for the year it left its native reality. This is the Tokyo of anime, a cyberpunk, hard-edge world of high tech lowlifes. General tech is 8, but experimental tech may range up to 11, especially in the fields of computers and genetic engineering. Tokyo 2121 and True York are in vicious competition to become the financial and trading sectors of Nexus. T2121 has an edge in technology, but True York still maintains functioning ports, while T2121 ended up completely landlocked. The corporate 'cold war' between the two hubs very often turns hot, spilling across whatever unfortunate realities happen to be concurrently in phase with both of them. Tokyo 2121 is a fairly old hub, having been in phase for roughly 150 years. (So it is the year 2271 locally)

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Scatterzone:This hub exemplifes what Nexus is to most people. Roughly 500 years ago, tny fragments (usually less than a block or so in size) from hundreds of realities and times were suddenly swept together and deposited here. The area is roughly ten by ten miles. Practically each building is from a differing reality. The west border of Scatterzone is Something Street;the East border is the Docks. Scatterzone is less internally stable than the other hubs...buildings flicker in and out at the rate of about one a month. Still,by Nexus standards, it's a reliable place to live and work.

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Suburbs

A 'suburb' is a reality which is partially in phase with Nexus -- enough so that there is regular traffic, but not enough that it is considered 'part of' Nexus. This includes many realities with stable, but small, interfaces, so that the whole of their native reality is easily accessible.

Technochina This reality had long been accessible only through some select portals, but recently, a great portion of Beijing came fully into phase with Nexus. This reality is one where the Lao Tzu never caught on and the greek philosophy of Aristotle made its way east. The result was a scientific revolution in China during the early 4th century. Colonies were founded on the Pacific coast of the Americas by the 5th century;Europe was conquered by steam-powered 'dragon tanks' by the 6th century, and the dawning years of the 7th century AD saw the first expeditions to the moon. Now in its equivalent of the year 983 AD, Technochina's Beijing is an immense city of very high technology, ruled by a complex beurocracy which owes allegiance to an immortal Emperor. They view the city of 'barbarians' they are now in contact with as both a threat and a potential new territory. Emigration is very tightly restricted, but attempts to control the flow of information have failed miserably, due to the many links between "The Web of Voices Travelling On The Lightning of Heaven" and the Internex.

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Gothos:

Gothos is the name the Nexans have given to one of the worlds currently 'in phase' with Nexus. There are quite a few interfaces between Gothos and other realities in phase with Nexus, but the bulk of them lead to various places in New Kent, the city which occupies Gothos' Manhattan Island.

Gothos (the inhabitants call it 'Earth') is a malign world of dark sorcery and twisted plots. In gross detail, its' history is very similair to that of most of the so-called 'Prime-line' earths, but there are subtle differences...more than just a few renamed cities.

It's 1996 in Gothos, but a visitor there will find this hard to believe. The architecture and technology are, for the most part, roughly equivalent to the early 1920's. There is no significant interstate road network, much of the nation has no regular telephone service, and radio is very limited in practicality. Architecture is bit more advanced than would be expected...despite the primitive stylings, there are many skyscrapers bigger than the Empire State building, and bridges such as the ones in Port Assisi (San Francisco) are in existence, though stylistically odd. Gothos' America never entered the Great European War, which ended with Germany finally going down to defeat in 1924. There was never a World War II,a Communist revolution in China, or the turbulence of the 1960's. The Russian Republic (Capital:Trotskgrad) is one of the major powers opposing the expansionist New Asian Coalition. America remains passionately neutral.

All of this would just mark Gothos as another mildly amusing alternate history, and a potential market for lots of tech. However, the real distinguishing trait of Gothos is the fact it is home to a plethora of hidden powers, all vying for control. The billions who live on this world are viewed as cattle, breeding stock, or lab animals by the few thousand "others" who pull the strings behind the scenes. These groups are too small to rule by force, so they rule by stealth. Further, no one breed will permit another to gain too much power, so they continually battle among themselves through their intermediaries. The Seven are:

Each of these groups contains numerous sub-groups, most of whom barely tolerate each other.

Another intriguing aspect of this world is the near-total abscence of traditional horror fiction. There are no movies detailing how to stake vampires, or lurid novels discussing the uses of silver on werewolves. Popular culture is supremely mundane, so as to suppress any interest in either the supernatural or in the advance of technology. This world has no HG Wells or Jules Verne. Charles Dickens existed, but he never wrote 'A Christmas Carol'. Some of Shakespeare's plays are known, those with no elements of the supernatural. All of this increases the helplessness and terror of the populace when they are subjected to forces beyond their knowledge;they don't even have the crutch of familiarity to fall back on. Such things as wizards and vampires are completely unknown to the populace at large, even as legends.

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Babbage:The Steampunk reality. It's 1875, and forty years of Analytical Engine technology has enabled mankind to design etherships and begin sailing between worlds. Oddly enough, the primary interface to this world isn't through Neovictoria or similair realities;it's via the Canal, which has links to this worlds London and Mars. Babbage is only starting to understand the true meaning of the Nexus connection, which is only marginally stable at this point.

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Neo-Victoria:This reality can usually be reached from Babbage by continually heading to progressively lower-tech parts of it;eventually, you'll wander into here. This reality is an 1890's London where the British Empire rules most of the Americas and Europe;the US revolution failed, but the French did not;this led to a strenghened England taking over during the chaos of the French Revolution. The shift into phase with Nexus has given the Empire new lands to conquer, and they are not at all adverse to using Nexan technology to finish conquering their home reality. Curiously enough, the steampunk technology from Babbage fails to function in Neovictoria;it seems that 'alternate' technological paths do not work here.

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The Dark Realities:This is not a specific reality, but a term given to a cluster of realities linked, it seems, by their nightmarish quantities. Magic is real but low-powered;these are realities of subtle warping, not flashy bolts of lightning. Technologies range from the medevial to cyberpunk;the common thread is bleak corruption and decay. While the actual realities composing this cluster come and go (with attendant risks for any Nexan trapped in one when it phases out), there are a few relatively stable ones:The werecreature infected village of late 14th century France;the bleak 19th century village huddled beneath the dark castle wherein dwells an immortal lord;the urban darkness of the late 20th century;the festering decay beneath the streets of a 22nd century megarcology. Any of these realities can be entered unknowing from their saner cousins;the line between light and darkness is very thin...Gothos is at the 'center' of these realities.

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Slimetown:Slimetown is a recently phased-in reality. The entire neighborhood resembles a huge, pulsing collection of gargantuan internal organs, all dripping and oozing viscous fluids. The neighborhood is a living being, and not a particularly aesthetic one, apparently geneered by a now-vanished race. In addition to the building themselves, hundreds of artifacts, tools, and weapons, all living entities, can be found.

All of this would make Slimetown a treasure trove, except for the fact that the first jackers to start making off with anything not nailed down found that the vanished builders and engineered defenses. Slimetown breeds defenders -- nightmares with an abundance of fangs, claws, teeth, and horns. Such defenders make raids on Slimetown a difficult proposition at best.

Why bother with it, then? Because Slimetown has become a favorite hiding place for all sorts of people who don't want to be found. If you go there in peace and don't mess with anything, the neighborhood leaves you alone. If you stay long enough in one place, it even begins to adapt itself to you. This makes it an ideal spot to hole up for a while, and thus, bounty hunters and skip tracers often find themselves forced to go in to drag their target out. This usually entails a long, messy battle through a particularly disgusting environment.

Razortown film crews usually hover above Slimetown, looking for signs of action they can exploit.

Because Slimetown artifacts are living beings, they often (but not always) work in realities where high-tech usually doesn't. Figure that Slimetown equipment can roughly replicate anything up to TL 9, but with a 10-15% increase in weight, and usually the odor of rotting shellfish mixed with dead skunk. It will also look like something out of Giegers nightmares, by way of Bosch.

Normal life-affecting spells do not affect the biotech of Slimetown;either research custom spells, or use Animal or Tech College spells at -5. (A great application for manuevers). Please note that the living factories of Slimetown will quickly adapt to any spell used too frequently.

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Outlying Regions

There are areas which can only be accessed through portals, or which are only sometimes in phase with Nexus, or for whatever reason are not considered 'part' of Nexus, but merely accessible realities.

Arkham:The main portal into Arkham lies in the sewers under its version of Boston, and links back to a tunnel in part of the Undercity of Babel. The main reason to go to Arkham is to try to snatch some books;there's magical tomes in this reality that can bring back the Old Ones. Ritual magic works here, but Tech is limited to the early gasoline age. Translation occurs;calculators become slide rules, laptop computers become typewriters.

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Middlevale:Recently interfaced to Nexus, but you'd barely know it. Just about anything can exist in this reality, but only so long as no one else notices it. This is the land of 60's sitcoms, where you can have families of ghouls, stranded martians, talking horses, genies, and witches all wandering around suburbia with no one actually finding out. Attempts to forcibly confront the horribily mundane inhabitants with the nature of Nexus usually sets up an amazing string of ridiculous events to 'explain' the odd occurences. As a rule, for each Nexan, there will be one Middlevale 'confidante' who will notice the 'outsider' and seek to 'hide his secret'.

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Dead Gulch:A slightly out-of-the-way reality, Dead Gulch is a small western town, circa 1870, population 250 or so. The portal is located in the back room of the local saloon, and is only open (of course) at High Noon, for a minute at a time. The saloon keeper knows about the portal, and his price of entry is a bottle of booze, preferably one he's never seen before. The reality is no magic, except for Shamanism, which works sporadically (-3 to any related skill rolls). The Mundanity Effect is well at work here;outside of the saloon, any odd behavior, dress, etc, will be explained away as "Them fancy Easterners" or "Them weird furrin types". The Nexus side of the interface, oddly enough, is from " Oliver Kramberg's Coral Emporium", a flower shop catering to the underwater races of Nexus.

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Gatecrasher Earth:This planet, already covered with a patchwork of phased-in realities, has a lot in common with Nexus to begin with. This is what makes it odd that interfaces between the two are so sporadic. Openings occur seemingly at random, and to random points...sometimes, the interfaces open into the relatively civilized Empire Of The Inland Sea, other times into the heart of the Firepits or near the fortress of the Necromancer. There seems to always be some connection open, though...the key is finding it.

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Cybertron:Yes, Cybertron. It's not easy to find, but you can get there if you look. On a handful of occasions, the Great War has spilled out into Nexus proper, much to the consternation of those who like some semblance of physics.

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Gernsback:In this world, it's 1960, and everyone flies to work in personal helicopters, eats food pills, and has cradle to grave security thanks to the Global Peace Association. Let's just say that interfacing with Nexus really ticked off a lot of people. Now the GPA wants to help "civilize" Nexus, while most Nexans want to corrupt the Gernsbackians. (The sudden appearence of 30-lane metallic superhighways has made the autophreaks quite happy, however)

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Campaign City:This city is on the West Coast of an America in a world where brightly-costumed flying men is a common enough sight. From the appearence of Ultraman in 1938 up to the present day, the history of this world has been dominated by the existence of super-powered humans. While the interfaces between Campaign City and Nexus are stable and common, only metahumans can use them;this is an almost totally unique situation in Nexus, but then, Nexus consists entirely of unique situations.

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The Floating World:The Floating World is a reality only occasionally in-phase with Nexus. It is a double Dyson sphere, as described by Niven in 'Greater Than Worlds'. It consists of an opaque outer shell roughly 93 million miles from the sun, and a striated inner shell about 100 miles closer. In between is atmosphere and no gravity, creating a state of perpetual free-fall.

The vastness within is filled with all sorts of things -- crystal moons drifting along with slow-moving propellers miles across to keep them in position, houses of every description bobbling slowly on the currents, tufts of air-algae, swarms of birds and bats and pterasaurs, and many things beyond description. If there is a unifying style, it is a sort of late 17th century baroque, rather odd considering the overwhelming technology reqired to build the Floating World.

The inhabitants are human, albeit tall and thin. They seem more bemused than curious about the Nexans who occasionally pop in. No artifacts of advanced technology exist, or at least, nothing that *looks* like such an artifact can be found -- but it's believed such items must exist, somewhere. Attempts to ask the natives are met with polite non-sequiters;pushing the issue simply causes them to seek to leave.

All in all, the lifestyle practiced by the inhabitans is calm, peaceful, and low-tech -- food is 'farmed' from floating plant-tufts or hunted from flocks of flying creatures, and the rest of the time is spent socializing, gossiping, and seeing what drifts by. Every so often, some group of cybered-up,juiced-up, battlesuited, spell-laden would-be conquerors enter the portal to the Floating World;none have ever been seen again. What trade there is consists of non-native foodstuffs going in and various arts and crafts coming out.

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Magazines:Even with the Internex, there's still demand for print journalism. Some realities don't permit Internex, and besides, many people prefer something a tad more organized than ABUSENET or the Reality Wide Web. Every reality of any significant size has many local magazines, but a few enterprising souls have managed to create publications appealing to a large cross section of Nexus. Some of these, and a representative list of contents, are:

Sentients:A glossy weekly, with lots of color photos, not very probing interviews, and short cultural reviews. Among the highlights of the past few issues:
"Thomas Agrin:Interview With The Vampire"
"Cross-Species Marriage, one couple's story."
"The Felix Awards -- Our Picks"

Big Effin Guns:A biweekly magazine devoted to, as the title suggests, big (bleeping) guns. Sophisticated computers in the printing room helps create versions targeted to many tech levels.
"We test the BFG 9000 -- Demons, sure, but can it handle the killer cyborgs of the Coast Of Ruins?"
"Man-Portable Anti-Tank weapons -- Too bulky for duelling?"
"Gunpowder-equivalents in a dozen no-tech realities!"

Haqs:The print version of the infamous InterNex 'zine, Haqs is aimed at sharing hacking skill across realities. Recent articles include:
"Babbage Hackers Toolkit -- what wrenches and gears are best?"
"Proposed 128-bit Panreality Character Encoding"
"Chronohacking -- tapping into next months data today!"

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Oddities:There's lots of odd thing in Nexus...I mean, odd even by Nexan standards.

Flying Toaster Patrol:No one is sure where they came from, or how they got to Nexus. They seem to be able to thrive even in realities that ought to be highly adverse to them. They never suffer translation effects. They are, in a word, weird.

However, there's quite a few people in Nexus who would not be alive were it not for them. (On the other hand, the embarassment of being saved by a squadron of flying toasters has caused some people to commit suicide)They might be related to the Golf Balls From Hell, though no one is sure.

Odd Socks, Rain of:Every few years, the pocket universe where all the lost socks go overflows and ruptures, spilling said socks all over Nexus. No matter how many tens of thousands of socks might fall, no two ever seem to quite match. Like snowflakes, they are never identical. There are also rains of pens. However, pennies and coathangers tend to *vanish* from Nexus, to appear in countless other realities.

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Hall Of Mirrors:The Hall Of Mirrors is a 'pocket dimension', built by beings unknown for purposes unknown. It is invariably entered by accident, often through a slip. Exiting is another problem. Whoever enters the Hall finds themself confronted by mirrors on all sides, including the floor. Each mirror shows the person in the hall, but not as they are -- rather, the Hall shows infinite alternates of that person. Seeing all the ways that your life could have gone is invariably a life-changing experience;those who leave the hall are changed by the experience, not always for the better. (In GURPS terms, figure 15 points of new and fun mental disads, minus 5 points for each level of Strong Will. If this would reduce the total to 0, gain a 1 point quirk instead. Disads can be positive -- a character might gain a code of honor or sense of duty, for example. The PC and GM should work out just what the character saw and why it changed him the way it did)

Leaving the Hall Of Mirrors is trickier. There are two ways.

  1. Follow the maze:If the character manages to figure out the maze of mirrors, he will eventually reach the exit. However, spending too much time in the Hall can spell madness or death. Solving the Maze is an IQ-6 roll, 1 roll per hour, +1 for each hour, +3 if you have Absolute Direction. A critical failure means the character has gone quite mad (gain an additional 15 points of mental disads, preferably nasty ones). A second critical failure indicates the characters mind has been shattered irrevocably.
  2. Find yourself. In all the alternates of yourself, somewhere, there is the you who is in the Hall Of Mirrors! Find that one, and walk through the mirror. You'll be deposited in some random spot in Nexus. This is more a matter of pure luck than anything else -- roll 6 or less each hour to 'find yourself'. A critical failure indicates madness, as above. Regardless, since you are intentionally studying reflections deeply, you will be even more profoundly affected than most -- add 5 points to the Disads you end up with coming out, minimum of 5.

Note that people who have not heard of the Hall Of Mirrors won't be aware of either way out...

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